Perceptions

women’s poetry for a change
issue # 59
fall 2003
page three...

soul searcher’s diet
margaret boles
peeling, peeling, peeling potatoes
skimming skins scantily
fabulous food, ferocious waste
feel the bitter famine’s taste
reflect my rash peelings
pandering hurry, my feeling’s
always for the humble spud
for my hunger, it’s so good
after a long illness
rochelle hope mehr
blessed solitude where have you gone?
thrust into the world I am newly undone
too much to remember
too much left undone
thrust into the world
naked
alone
scared
undone
raw
flesh to be eaten
by a devouring world
heart exposed
flesh to be spat upon
heart to be shat upon
misdiagnosis/mistreatment lament
rochelle hope mehr
catch it. Catch it if you can
catch it early
do not wait
until the tentacles
lose their grip
until the tensors
forget their intensity
until the mind
slackens and the tongue
flaps gibberish
until the drool
congeals
and nobody sees you as sane
and your mind and body
are not mundane objects
of manipulation
in an assembly line
of the latest one-size-fits-all
weathervanes
they’ll affix one to an amenable
membrane
you’ll point in all the correct directions
at all the appropriate times
but still be quite insane
morning
rochelle hope mehr
now the room barely contains me
I am so much of the moment
and the stark appearance thrusts
its mottled self squarely into my eye
something sensitive is lost to the sensible
what was held in this room
- suspended in horizontal fixture -
defined and squeezed
and nestled into its own
nebulouscurvaturexistence
is gone
books on the bookshelves
just books
a bed, a bed
the gingham pattern on the bedspread
looks superfluous
the curtains spread gingerly
the light trickles in
om
rochelle hope mehr
is there nothing left to write?
no animus?
no angst?
no abounding symphony
of histrionic
pang(s)tellar
nobler
battles still to come?
all I want is peace
all I want is
om
that’s my poem about pickles
temi rose
I want to write a poem
about pickles
pickles taste good
they’re crunchy
or not
but if not
they aren’t pickled properly
and pregnant women purportedly
crave
them
pickles

the uncertainty principle
rochelle hope mehr
when I got sick
and had to leave school
I felt humiliated
I had lost my mind
I could not focus on my work
this was a humiliation
for so much of my self worth
was determined by how well
I did at school
if two and three no longer made five
how could I have a future
how could I have a life
if things no longer added up
no longer made sense?
Still, I longed for someone encouragement
a kind word from someone that somehow
someday I’d be myself again
therapists offered theories
therapists assigned blame
this week to Mom
the net, to Dad
I “always wanted to be in control”
then I was “too impulsive”
farther and farther I slid
from myself
I wondered why
this guy I had known
never called
was I so far from
the realm of the acceptable?
What had made me
acceptable before?
Was I more sure of myself?
Is uncertainty so unattractive?
I keep asking myself
knowing in my heart
that the closer I come
to gauging my own worth
the farther away
you recede